Five killed by snipers in Lebanon's Tripoli

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Five people have been killed by sniper fire since Saturday in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, medical and security sources said.

The deaths are the latest round of violence fueled by sectarian tensions over neighboring Syria's civil war.

Tripoli, 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Syrian border, has been subject to sharp divisions between the Sunni Muslim majority and small Alawite community for decades.

The Lebanese army used "rockets" for the first time to quell the fighting between rival neighborhoods, one security source said, without specifying which weapons were used. Normally, soldiers use assault rifles to target snipers.

The sources said three of the dead belonged to the Sunni Muslim Bab al-Tabbaneh district, whose residents overwhelmingly support the Sunni Muslim rebels battling Syrian President Bashar Assad.